Weather, Isobars, and Weathermen

National Standards:

Energy in Earth System
12DESS1.3 Heating of earth’s surface and atmosphere by the sun drives convection within the atmosphere and oceans, producing winds and ocean currents.
12DESS1.4 Global climate is determined by energy transfer from the sun at and near the earth’s surface. This energy transfer is influenced by dynamic processes such as cloud cover and the earth’s rotation, and static conditions such as the position of mountain ranges and oceans.

State Standards: GLEs/GSEs

ESS1 (ext.)-3 Students demonstrate an understanding of processes and change over time within earth system by
3aa describing how interaction of wind patterns, ocean currents, and mountain ranges results in a global pattern of latitudal bands of rain, forests, and deserts.

Context of Lesson:

Students will apply what they know about how wind forms and how the sun heats earth surface to discover how T-storms are produced.
Opportunities to learn:
Depth of Knowledge
Prerequisite Knowledge
Students will apply wind formation knowledge from the first class to help them understand thunderstorm formation. Students will assume to have no prior knowledge as to how thunderstorms are produced.
Plans for differentiating Instruction
A teacher demonstration in the beginning will target visual learners as a second teaching method to last the content of the last class taught. Also, music and poetry/short story will be used to target diversity of learners.
Accommodations
If students do not understand demonstration or in class activities, teacher will provide a worksheet or different demonstration either in class or tomorrow.
Modifications
Lesson will focus on essential topics more or less depending on student understanding and formative assessment (questions) throughout class.
Environmental Factors

Objective:

You will be able to:

Describe how T-storms form
List what is necessary for a T-storm to occur
Describe lightning
Show why Isobars are used on the weather channel
Differentiate between a high and low pressure system

Materials

Perhaps rent /Earth the Biography/
handouts of the current map of weather channel (isobar map) found at www.weather.com
review pages 294-296 of EarthComm
Library Curriculum for Making Lightning
http://scifiles.larc.nasa.gov/text/educators/activities/2001_2002/athome/coriolis_effect.html
computer and speakers
Vivaldi
matches CD Notes by Nick
pg. 239 & 251 Earth Comm
an apple
handout for the poem http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/tnbw_publishing/summer_thunderstorm.html

Introduction:

Opening:

An introduction to what T-storms are all about.

Distribute poem and be ready to turn on Vivaldi (don't tell them the composers name).
On a new sheet of paper, require students to

analyze this poem http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/tnbw_publishing/summer_thunderstorm.html
- OR
Write your own poem/short story about an expeience you had during a thunderstorm. It can be as personal as you want. I won’t ask you to read it to the class unless you would like.
- OR
Listen to these 3 movements of this Concerto. It is known to be written about a thunderstorm.
- Encourage specific details about the stages of the thunderstorms. Some examples of the details I want are:
  - What do you notice about your surroundings before the thunderstorm happens and after it goes away.
  - What mood does the weather put you in before, during, and after it happens?

After allowing students time to write their responses in their journal, collect.
Announce them that the discussion will be held a little later in the class.
What they should pull away with at this point is that there are changes in weather and with Thunderstorms, they seem to occur in steps.

Engagement

Activity 1: Solving the dilemma of why do we have changes in weather?

Before we found out why we had wind. We are taking it to the next step.

Lets look at a place on earth...
- Describe the location of a land that has water on either side of it. [It is Flordia but it will be kept it a secret for now).
  - It is in between two warm bodies of water.
  - Many retirees go down there to live.
  - Strangely enough, it is known to have many many thunderstorms especially in the afternoon. You can even see heat lightning when it is not thunderstorming).
- Eventually they should guess Flordia.
Question 1 posed: What is the reason for their frequent thunderstorms?
- You should all know by know where the source of energy would come from for storms. What is it?
  - Expected answer: The Sun
- A trickier question is where does the sun's energy go?
  - Answer: Into the bodies of water around Flordia.
    - Water holds heat more than land, so when land cools, warm air flows in from water and bump heads, no where to go bout up, called convergence.
Write on the board our new vocab. word convergence and draw a pic of flordia such as that on page 251 Earthcomm
Have students fill in the word Flordia (now they will have a place to relate the word to)
- either a warm front wins or a cold front, more rapidly the cold air mass wedges under warm air mass, greater chance tstorm will form
Question 2 posed: Why is this information about Flordia so important?
- Stress the point that by studying these fronts and wind patterns, one is able to predict the weather. It can be very simple. This is one example of why the weather channel is able to predict the weather?
Question 3 posed: Is the weather channel always accurate?
- Expected answer: no, b/c they are only using predictions

Activity 2: Describing the steps of a thunderstorm

Create this table on the board (while playing Vivaldi again)

The stages of a thunderstorm	stage	characteristics
1	beginning
2	middle
3	final

have students describe three main parts of a thunderstorm, it should reflect what they wrote about
- as they describe the 3 parts, fill in the characteristics in one column of the table
  - Step 1: Beginning (sky is dark clouds forming, cumulus build into cumulonimbus clouds form as warm air carrying moisture rises with cooler air, cools and condenses, releases energy that keeps air warmer, making it continue to rise, this continues till a very tall cumulonimbus clouds form like stacking, have flat bases because that is the dew point.
  - Step 2; Middle, starts to rain, precipitation lightning, heaviest rainfall,
  - Step 3: Final state, clouds evaporate, precipitation finishes, downdraft occurs
Add the vocabulary words cumulus, mature and dissipating to the diagram
Conclusion: We just figured out the three stages of Thunderstorms
Question 1 posed: Can anyone figure out what I’m playing and why? Some of you may have chosen to write about it.
- Vivaldi (1678-1741 Baroque) Spring from Larger Work, The Four Seasons (1723)
- based on a sonnet Vivaldi himself wrote second movement (slow section is thunderstorm first and third movements are happer and move lively, relates to 3 stages of thunderstorm)
SIDE NOTE: page 294-296 EarthComm provides more indepth descriptions of thunderstorms

Activity 3: How do thunderstorms form?

Convergence (as do Flordia's)
convection- upward/downward motions of air caused by differences in air temperature- can lead to clouds (also a review)
Orographic/mountains can act as a barrier, forcing wind upward = clouds
frontal wedging= by a front
- See page 239 of EarthComm to help expand on these topics.
- Require students to find similarities between all of these formations.
  - Expected Answer: they all contain rising air, which is a characteristic of thunderstorms
    - This is the reason some people say that upturned leaves can give a forewarning that a T-storm is approaching.

Activity 4: Lightning
- Question 1 posed: Why would you want to stick metal conductors on to your house?
  - Charge of bottom of cloud is positive, and ground is negative
  - charge wants to repel eachother, so round top doesnt allow for it, so thats why its pointed (Ask Dr. Fogleman about this again for review, hard to find this description online)
- Question 2 posed: So knowing what i just told you, what is lightning?
  - electric charges transported and segregated into different areas by moving precipitation
  - Write above definition on the board
  - Fun fact: Inform them we don’t know exactly what causes lightning because dangerous to study and inconvenient. One idea is that in a storm cloud, the moving air makes tiny water droplets and ice rub together so they become charged with static electricity. The positive electrical charges float up near the top of the cloud and the larger ones, with negative charges, stay near the bottom. This separation of electrical charges is very unstable and lightning is the way the charges are equalized or become balanced.
  - http://www.wunderground.com/health/lightning.asp <-- some fun facts
- Have students create lightning using website as a guide... will work on finding one over break.

Closure

Discovering how thunderstorms can be visualized applying our knowledge we just learned.
- Lets Figure out the weather of the U.S.
  - Hand out current map of the U.S. from the weather channel
  - Question 1 posed: What do we know already that affects the atmosphere and the weather?
    - Expected answers:
      - coriolis effect does
      - friction between two bodies of air do (created t-storm formation)and air pressure affects it greatly, as we can see in thunderstorm formationwhy is this? (have students review why pressure is important for the air involved in t-storm formation)
  - Isobars can also affect the weather.
    - iso-Greek for equaldescribe areas of equal pressure
      - air pressure normally decreases with altitude
    - see http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bna/educate/VATHENA_2/weather/hsweathr/isobar.html for a small lesson on Isobars with a currently printed diagram of weather channel
  - Create a table that can summarize the isobar characteristics on the handout together.

pressure	direction of air
low	rises
high	air sinks

Next to this table, have them explain describe that...
- when isobars are close = intense weather
- far = mild weather

This is how weathermen are able to predict tstorms
For future research, search low pressure spirals about weather

Homework

check out wunderground.com

Assessment

Formative: Students will be asked to describe to me why a thunderstorm forms and what is necessary to cause it? Students will be asked how lightning forms. Students will also be asked what the purpose of isobars is for weathermen. This will tell me if students have grasped the concepts proposed for today. Also have them hand in a hard copy of the table/ diagram that we went over in class today with any questions they have about it on them.

Reflection

(only done after lesson is enacted)
Student Work Sample 1: Approaching Proficiency
Student Work Sample 2: Proficient
Student Work Sample 3: Exceeds Proficiency

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